Impinj recently unveiled its new Gen2X innovations— three key innovations inhibit fraudulent items and tags, reduce stray tag reads and help readers find and focus on tags of interest in retail and industrial environments.
The Seattle-based company added Gen2X support to its M770 and M780 series endpoint ICs, thereby expanding Gen2X’s use in logistics, manufacturing, automotive and healthcare.
Released in December 2024 and now widely available across the RAIN industry, Gen2X is a standards-compatible enhancement to the industry radio protocol that speeds inventory, improves reader sensitivity and range, improves read-zone confinement, inhibits fraudulent items, protects consumer privacy and reduces solution cost.
Gen2X Solution
Chris Diorio, Impinj Co-Founder and CEO, said he is “thrilled” with the industry’s adoption of Gen2X, including partner launches of more than 100 Gen2X-enabled inlays and 50 readers in less than a year.
“As global demand for RAIN continues to grow, we’re expanding Gen2X to help our solution developers and partners better address enterprise opportunities and solve enterprise challenges,” said Diorio. “[This] announcement fulfills our promise to keep advancing Gen2X to address market needs. We will continue making our Gen2X innovations, developed through our work with leading enterprises, widely available to the industry to drive RAIN adoption.”
New Capabilities
Counterfeit tags and items are a persistent challenge for enterprises and brands. Impinj Endpoint IC Verification, a new Gen2X innovation, inhibits fraudulent tags and items by allowing RAIN readers and printers to verify whether a tag contains an authentic Impinj endpoint IC. This new verification effectively replaces EPC-TID verification.
Stray tag reads are another persistent enterprise challenge, with unwanted tags outside the desired read zone degrading autonomous reading solutions. Gen2X Fast Reinventory, when combined with read-zone-confinement techniques that Impinj introduced at the conference, reduces stray tag reads. In addition, a new Gen2X Tag Selection capability allows readers to better specify which tags should respond during inventory and which should remain quiet, helping enterprise solutions read only desired tags.
“Having already launched over 35 Gen2X-enabled RAIN RFID inlays and tags based on Impinj’s powerful M800 endpoint ICs, Tageos is excited to continue working closely with Impinj to integrate these new Gen2X innovations into our broad portfolio of Impinj M700- and M800-based inlays for retail and industrial applications,” said Chris Reese, Chief Technology Officer at Tageos. “These new Gen2X innovations help us improve inlay and tag readability through advanced tag filtering, and will help businesses protect themselves against counterfeit tags and items.”
The expanded Gen2X solution toolbox helps retailers reliably inventory and track their smallest items; grocery stores to manage freshness at the individual unit level; healthcare organizations use secure smart cabinets for pharmaceutical storage; and logistics and manufacturing enterprises to intelligently track and authenticate packages and the items inside them.
M770, M780 Series Upgrades
The company is adding Gen2X to its M770, M775, M780 and M781 endpoint ICs as well, designed for applications and use cases requiring larger EPC and/or user memory. The Gen2X addition improves performance on smaller tags, in large tag populations, on densely packed items and on traditionally hard-to-read items such as those containing liquids and metals.
Additionally, Impinj upgraded these ICs with substantial mechanical and process enhancements to improve inlay manufacturability, reliability and quality for industrial applications. Impinj also added Enduro V2 bonding pads to strengthen chip-to-antenna adhesion, providing exceptional mechanical stability, assembly consistency, reliability and durability over a tag’s lifespan.
“Beontag is thrilled to upgrade our tags based on Impinj M770 and M780 series endpoint ICs with Gen2X to unlock new use cases with our industrial customers,” said Miika Pylvänäinen, Global Product Director, Beontag. “With the addition of Gen2X, M770/M780-based products such as Silverline Blade II+, Ironside Slim, and Survivor take performance to the next level, delivering faster, more accurate and verifiable reads while unlocking exceptional reliability as customer demand for RFID tags continues to expand at a rapid pace.”